


Zihuatanejo

by mostlyanything19 (halfanapple)



Category: Shawshank Redemption - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:33:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24149764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfanapple/pseuds/mostlyanything19
Summary: With hope in his heart, Red goes south.
Relationships: Andy Dufresne & Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding
Comments: 10
Kudos: 22





	Zihuatanejo

**Author's Note:**

> This little fic is movie-compliant except for two things that I carried over from the book. Those are 1) mimicing Red's writing style as closely as possible, although that is very similar to the movie anyway and Morgan Freeman is DEFINITELY still narrating all of it, and 2) My personal little favorite that didn’t make it into the movie: Andy used to give his polished rocks away sometimes, and Red says that Andy gave him the greatest number, five in all, which he clearly cherished very much. He describes them as “pretty” several times over, and in his narration this becomes a really significant term, set against prison life in which pretty things, Red says, just don’t exist. It speaks to what Andy is capable of bringing into their lives – a piece of something that doesn’t belong in there; a piece of outside, a sense that there are other things beyond these walls and that you can still reach them. I liked that very much.
> 
> What else? If it were 2007 this would totally be a songfic to (a non-gendered version of) Lionel Richie's "Stuck On You". Just so you know. Have fun!

oOo

Zihuatanejo.

The word feels foreign on my tongue, even after I have whispered it to myself so many times, over and over, on the long journey south. No matter how much I repeat it and no matter how close I get (and I am getting closer), it never feels as though it belongs with me, to be thought of and reached for – it barely feels as if it can be real at all, to tell the truth. But that’s how it is with so many things for me, these days: It’s a world of contradictions, and no easy simplicity to it.

The word is, for all its strangeness, something of an old friend to me: a kernel of freedom, a dream of white and blue that Andy Dufresne left me before he escaped from Shawshank Prison, and I’ve kept it just as safe as can be, and just as secret. You could say I’ve kept it just like one of those polished rocks he used to gift me; a small, precious, pretty thing; something that doesn’t belong in a place like Shawshank.

But belong there or not, Andy went and brought it into being; he polished it up and dropped it into my palm like one of those small, shimmering rocks, dropped it just as casual as you please… but if you get right to the heart of it, there was nothing casual about it, no sir, and I’m damned glad that I am a good listener, and that my memory has never yet betrayed me.

When he asked me, „You remember the name of the town, don’t you, Red?“, in that neat copperplate handwriting of his, for a moment I damn near had a heart attack, because in that very moment my mind drew a blank on it so big I could have fallen through and gone mad with the searching. But only for a moment. Then it came back to me and I said it out loud, right there in that summer hayfield, leaning against that wall of rocks.

_Zihuatanejo._

It still feels like a dream, but then again, all of Mexico does. Most of the world does, to a used-up old crook like me. I’ve said I was excited, and that wasn’t a lie. I’m still scared, more scared than I can remember being in all my years in the joint (or perhaps this is simply another kind of fear) – but I _am_ excited and that makes it bearable. That makes it, I suppose, what you would call an _adventure_. Andy Dufresne left me a breadcrumb trail of hope leading from a hayfield in New England all the way down to the coast of the mighty Pacific. And following in his footsteps, I can feel it bloom inside myself; a fluttery, fragile, fearful thing. _Maybe the best of things._

In the long hours on the bus, there isn’t much to do except two things: To think – and, if you’re feeling brave that day, with the wind blowing in your face and the clothes sticking to your back from the heat of it, to feel.

I think of my parole officer and the job I just walked out on and will never come back to. I think of Brooks’s last words in the dark wood of a ceiling beam. I think of an entire country of people whose language I do not speak, whose customs I don’t know, and which I am driving smack into the middle of, right as we speak, trying to reach the other end. I think of how it’s been two years. How fast the world moves now. How distant and unconnected this wide and dizzying planet feels from the damp gray cage that has been all my life – or most of it that counts, anyway. I think of all the things I could find upon my arrival – and all the things I might not.

But mostly, I am feeling brave, and I keep the window down. There’s nothing like the wind in your face from a moving greyhound bus to feel like a man who is free to do anything and go anywhere – just anywhere he pleases. I have kept my manuscript, my clothes and my few other belongings. Those are in the suitcase at my feet. My steadily dwindling supply of money is stashed in a safer place than this… and in my pocket, I carry Andy’s letter, and the handful of polished rocks he gave me, smooth and pretty and so foreign to the place they came from – but no less real. No less true.

I blink away the grit that comes with the wind and sweat through my shirt against the rumbling seat of the bus; I swipe my thumb over the polished surfaces in my pocket until I must have near worn them away; I roll the name around on my tongue and I _hope._

oOo

In the end, Zihuatanejo is very much a piece of this world, and no more dreamlike than any other middle-sized coastal town all along the outline of America. The driver of the rickety old truck I hitched a ride on with three words of broken Spanish and a good chunk of my remaining cash gives a friendly honk and I wave, and with a cloud of dust he leaves me, at the end of my journey.

Well – almost. But the rest of it, for all the town’s presence and solid mooring in reality, feels all the more surreal for it, all the more like some strange and impossible dream I should be wrenched out of at any moment by the discordant clang of a baton against bars. My head is floating a little. I am tired, and the day was long and hot, and there is no hotel, they tell me, everywhere I turn. No hotel here.

“American?” I finally ask and attempt to roll my R the best I can manage, miming to the woman at the little market stall that he would be taller than me, the man who I can’t risk to ask for by name; not either name. Just in case. “Por favor? Un American?”

 _“Americano?”_ she asks in return and I nod so eagerly I get a little dizzy. _“Sí, vive en una casa un poco más abajo en la playa._ _Pero él estará trabajando en el barco ahora mismo. El siempre hace.”_

Seeing that I don’t understand, she comes around her stall and points me emphatically in a certain direction, and thanking her, I go. Down the street. Around a corner.

To the ocean.

And if you were wondering: It really is just that blue.

oOo

The last leg of my journey, I walk barefoot in the sand. My jacket slung over my shoulder along with my shoes, my tie loosened, and my feet in the spray. Seagulls overhead, shells and flotsam and white sand underfoot I walk on ahead, barely thinking... but feeling plenty. Once or twice I bend to pick up a rock polished smooth by the water and the waves, and it fits in the palm of my hand like the name of the town fits into my mouth – a little bit foreign and not used to being there, out of place but there nevertheless, polished and pleasant and pretty like the place it calls home.

I can’t wait now. I’m very tired, but my steps are getting quicker the nearer I draw, to wherever the woman has sent me; wherever the breadcrumbs lead. I can make out the shape of something further down the beach now, in the sunshine on the white sand, and with every step, it becomes a little clearer. I think it’s a boat. I think Andy has found himself a boat to fix up, and I think it’s Andy himself, right there, that small figure moving along the hull of it, hard at work. I think that’s him all right.

He hasn’t seen me yet, and so I go on, strolling up to that boat and its owner just as casual as you please – but, if you get right to the heart of it, you know that there’s nothing casual about it at all. In my pocket, I run my finger over the warm, smooth surface of my polished rocks, and feel the wind in my hair and the sun on my face, and my heart thumping wild and free in my chest as Andy looks up, and sees me.

Zihuatanejo.

It’s a word in a language I don’t speak, rolling foreign off my tongue but making a place there, all the same. It’s a word as smooth and shimmering as a rock found on a beach, polished by wind and by water, by careful hands and time, and dropped into a prison-grey palm like a promise. It’s a hope, and a dream, and a very old friend, and I’ve found it.

I’ve found it.

oOo


End file.
